My Weekend Project: Moral Support - Your Own Personal Help Hotline

http://www.moralsupport.me

by MarkPNeyer • 15 years ago

34 16 15 years ago

MarkPNeyer4• 15 years ago

jackowayed2• 15 years ago

Whoa, you're giving each person their own number (as opposed to, say, an extension). That means you're paying $1/customer/month even for dormant customers. Seems like a really bad call.

Other than that, I really like it. Sorta like Awesomeness Reminders, but recorded by people who love you. Design could use some work, but the signup flow was nice (not requiring any info but phone number). Though now the only way to login involves you calling me again and telling me the pin I already know, which isn't great.

Also, I'd stop using a redirect and set it up so that Appengine serves write.

MarkPNeyer4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! I plan to add some more features and tidy it up a bit, but I wanted to see what people thought.

patio11• 15 years ago

That means you're paying $1/customer/month even for dormant customers. Seems like a really bad call.

I do this for Appointment Reminder, too, mostly out of sheer laziness. I might revisit it eventually, but it hasn't broken the bank yet. (Finding my own number on my Twilio interface has gotten annoyingly complicated, though :) )

jackowayed2• 15 years ago

But people are paying you. Right now his service is free.

DTrejo• 15 years ago

    This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.

MarkPNeyer4• 15 years ago

I'm not sure what happened to the DNS; use this link instead:

http://moral-support.appspot.com/

nhebb• 15 years ago

If you're a Depeche Mode fan, YourOwnPersonalJes.us seems to be available.

theboos• 15 years ago

It's telling me something.

sudonim• 15 years ago

Cool idea! You probably weren't expecting to have an issue like that. In retrospect, having a nice friendly fail page would earn you customer love. Especially on a site relating to how people are feeling.

pdufour• 15 years ago

Looks like a good idea to me.

mayava• 15 years ago

Have you tried using Compassion Pit? Made by the same guy who made Awesomeness Reminders, mentioned by another commenter. Basically the same concept, just web-only. Could be a cheaper start for gathering a user base and gauging long-term interest.

partition• 15 years ago

Great idea. But what if no one loves you?

To address this, you might be able to automatically generate moral support. You just need to add a 'link to Facebook' feature along with a little machine learning + speech->text->speech algorithms so that the most 'appropriate' message can be generated given the current time and the user's Facebook status.

With enough data to bootstrap the system, we'll probably end up not even needing other people IRL.

LuisZaman• 15 years ago

Lots of great comments so far, I really like the idea. Good luck building interest!

neilk• 15 years ago

I don't know what to call this. Part of me has an instant reaction that it's a terrible idea, but on reflection that's because I'm uncomfortable with it. So that's prejudice talking. If I look at it rationally, it seems like this just might work. It's kind of brilliant.

One suggestion: people who don't reach out to others are not going to buy this product for themselves. So, it should be giftable. Imagine if you have a friend who's kind of a sad sack or is going through a divorce or death in the family. You and N other friends record motivators. It's like signing a condolences card, only way better. Actually more personal.

MarkPNeyer4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the idea. I think i'll implement the 'gift' mechanism.

My Weekend Project: Moral Support - Your Own Personal Help Hotline

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